My BIGGEST Mistake: Our Sheep ESCAPED - Farmer Mary Field Notes (Week 51)
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Oh guys. Do you know that saying, “Pride goes before a fall”? Pull up a comfy chair; do I have stories for you this week.
This week was our date to take ram lambs to the processor. We set these dates almost a year in advance, depending on the processor and how busy they get, so there’s not much wiggle room. This time we had enough slots for 10 ram lambs, and we had 18. So, the plan was to load all of them in the trailer, sort which ones we wanted to go to the processor, and then we’d take the rest to the sale barn at Mount Hope. Typically, when we haul animals like this, the processor allows us to drop off animals the night before the actual date, and the sale barn is the same way. Drop-off is typically after normal business hours, and there are holding barns set up for just that purpose.
Now, John and I were able to accomplish part one of the plan together–it took us an hour and a half to get the rams loaded from the field and into the trailer. Partly, this is because they are a disrespectful bunch that kept jumping over our temporary fences (note to self, use hotter fence to train them next time), and partly it was because they’d bonded with the five bulls and the bulls started acting like bodyguards for the rams!! I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. The bulls would actually move between us and the sheep so we couldn’t catch them. Absolutely wild. At least they’re super docile bulls. We were weaving and dodging and lunging with shepherd’s crooks. At any rate, Part 1 was a success. Rams in trailer. Then John had to leave for fire class (he’s getting certified so he can be part of our local volunteer fire department. Good stuff.)
I wasn’t super worried. All I had to do was take the kids, we’d drop off the first group at the processor facility, and then scoot down to Mount Hope and get some tasty dinner at Mary Yoder’s Amish kitchen. We were ready. I even managed to spin the truck and trailer and back in at the loading dock on the first try! 6 sheep went into the holding barn…and four jammed themselves through a four-inch gap between my trailer and the fence. And then they ran for the 55mph road right out front.
It’s November at about 4:45pm, so the light is fading, and the retail butcher shop side of the operation is closed. We are so screwed. Luckily, two guys ran out from the shop and helped us push the sheep back away from the road. Ez took off like an absolute lightning bolt and started chasing them down. They literally jumped across a ravine with a creek in the bottom, took off across a cornfield, and disappeared into the woods with three of them. One of the guys looks at me and asks, “So what’s your plan?” Uh. I literally don’t have one. He’s taking pictures with his phone, and I start running after the fourth sheep and lost it in a brush-filled part of the ravine.
I call John with the promising opener of “Please don’t divorce or disown me, but we lost four sheep”. He pivots to come to the rescue, but is 30 minutes away. At that point, I get flagged down by the farmer who is out running his combine in the aforementioned cornfield. He’s been watching the whole scenario unfold, and I apologize profusely. He waves it off, and says he called his wife and kids to come help, and that they were on the way. Ohmygoodness, ok. So I station Fiona, who is wearing a hot pink coat, at the entrance to the woods. All I can see of Ez is the glowing red dot from his heated vest. He’d managed to run the three sheep to ground in a tangle of logs and pricker bushes, and is keeping them from running.
As the light is fading, a dark-colored Suburban comes crawling through the field with its lights on, and spots Fiona at the edge of the woods. It parks, and out come three teenagers in Carhartt coats and overalls and boots and hats and gloves, and they are ready for action. We plow into the woods and I crawl into the tangle of thorns to start hauling sheep out, and they grab them and we trek out of the woods, toss the sheep in the back of the Suburban, and the 7th grade boy sits on them while we close the door. As we are rolling back to the processor’s building, the kids are chatting back and forth about how they haven’t seen inside the new facility yet, and their 4H projects, and what school district they’re in, and John comes roaring past us, ready for action. We wrangle the three sheep into their holding pen, and go back for the fourth.
It’s full dark now, and we’ve got a collection of headlamps and flashlights, and we’re walking along both sides of the ravine looking for the fourth sheep, which is, of course, brown to match the brush. At least the three white ones stood out in the woods. The 7th grader dives and misses, and then John takes a flying leap and legit lands on the sheep, like in the cartoons where the legs all go out in different directions and the eyes bulge out really big? It was that, and it was epic. He thrashes about, staggers up the side of the ravine with the sheep, and it, too, goes in the back of the Suburban. We thanked them over and over, and they promised this wasn’t even the craziest thing they’d ever seen, only a moderately crazy farm event. They went home, John scooted off to fire class, only a little late, and we decided there was no way we would make the Mount Hope delivery deadline, so we turned for home, parked the truck and trailer by the barn, gave the sheep hay and water inside the trailer, made ourselves some pizza bagels for dinner, showered away any ticks, and collapsed.
None the worse for wear, I rolled down the driveway at 6 the next morning to get to the sale barn, delivered the sheep to the auction facility using their VERY easy drive through (they close a door behind you, and one on either side of the trailer, so there is literally no chance for escape), and then took myself home for more coffee. All that because of a 4-inch gap in my parking job. I have never been so grateful for the assistance of strangers. I took them a turkey the next day in thanks, and privately vowed to be overly careful with all of my future parking jobs. So much for having pride in my new farm skills!
Turns out, I didn’t have long to wait to test my vow. My bodyguard bulls from the other day needed to be moved to a different pasture, and the distance was long enough that it would be impractical to set a lane of fence and walk them there like I usually do. Plus, these guys don’t have much practice with that type of move, so it was MUCH safer to load them in the trailer and just drive them to the new spot. The catch? I was the only one home to load them.
Step 1: Back the trailer through the pasture gate to set up a loading spot. This is tricky for a couple reasons. One: the trailer is about two feet narrower than the gate, so I need to not hit either side as I back up, but I also need to make sure I don’t leave any gaps for them to sneak through (I learned my lesson with the sheep!!). This meant I needed to get through the gate, and then sort of turn the trailer a bit to block the gaps on either side. Add to that, this pasture has a hill right inside the gate, so I needed to back in far enough that the trailer door wasn’t blocked by the hill, but not so far that the deck of the trailer was too high and scary for them to step into. Now do all that with only your side mirrors and a bumper-pull trailer instead of the maneuverability of a gooseneck. So, I get it parked, block any possible teeny gaps with extra temporary fence posts and the two reels of fence wire I brought with me. Now for Step 2: get them in the trailer.
Right. They’re halfway down the length of this very long pasture and have approximately zero interest in coming to see me after the sheep-catching extravaganza earlier in the week. They also have never had grain, so I don’t have much to entice them with–normally, you’d bring along a bucket of feed and shake it so they know there are tasty treats, but with these guys, it just wouldn’t make sense. So, I call for backup…except John is getting on a conference call in about five minutes and can neither come help me catch them nor bring me extra fence reels to herd them with. I also happen to be further than walking distance from the house and barn where my extra reels are. So, I spend John’s meeting time slowly moving the bulls up toward the end of the pasture where the trailer is parked. I’m singing to them, I’m moving into their space to put pressure on and then stopping when they get too bothered. By the time John rolls up with fence supplies, I’ve got them within maybe 20 feet of the trailer. Now, the fun begins. He heads out for his next meeting, and I start getting creative.
I used one reel of fence to create a smaller pasture, cutting them off from the rest of the space. Then, I attached my next reel at almost the same spot on the fence, but swept through that rectangular pasture like a pie wedge; they would move away from the fence, and I kept walking until they were within ten feet of the fence, and then I hooked that reel on the fence. And then I did it again, leapfrogging and setting smaller and smaller spaces until they could stand shoulder-to-shoulder next to the open trailer door, but if they wanted to move, the most open space was INSIDE the trailer. And then I waited. All of this happens at their pace. If I’ve learned anything in all of these dealings with livestock, it’s that I have to move at their pace. If I rush or move too energetically, they get freaked out and react in unpredictable ways. I want slow and predictable. And so, I wait. Eventually, they started testing the idea of getting in the trailer. One would get on, and then step off. Then another would try it and step back off. So I moved in on the side with the trailer door and slowly started swinging it closed, just to put on a little extra pressure. At that point, three of them self-loaded into the trailer, and two rude individuals jumped my very clever fence system. Speed mode! As the two ran away, I jumped in and quickly closed the trailer door. Woo!
Now I had three. The only problem is that I needed to get two more in there without releasing the first bunch. Luckily, the trailer has a divider door in it for just this purpose. Unluckily, it was latched open so I could drive the trailer without it slamming, and the latch was too tall for me to reach from the outside. Pause. Think. I unhooked their 150 gallon water trough, dumped it out, dragged it over, and flipped it upside down. Success! Something to stand on. I managed to release the latch, but now I needed to maneuver all three into a smaller space and shove the door closed, still from the outside. Easier said than done. They kept trying to get into the wrong section, then they’d get their heads stuck when I tried to swing it closed. I was vacillating between sweet talking them and calling them very rude names, all the while trying to move this heavy metal door with my arms shoved through the side of the trailer. Eventually it worked, and I was able to open the main door of the trailer again, roll up my fence setup, and go again.
This time, I had to outsmart fence jumpers. I started with my same strategy–make smaller and smaller sections for them to stand in, so they would get closer to the open trailer. This time, though, once I got them pretty close, I made the fence lines hot. Before, I was able to leave them off–the rest of the bulls respected just the idea of the wire. These last two, not so much. Fencing on the fly with hot wires kept the last two bulls in, but also meant I had to be extra careful not to light myself up in the process. I was also counting on them to see and hear their buddies in the trailer as an incentive to load. Finally, after yet more patience and waiting, and tiny adjustments to the fence, they loaded. The easiest part was driving off, backing into the next pasture, where I’d already set up their next space, and letting them go. One brief moment of panic–how was I going to release the divider door without getting flattened by three bulls?? As I’m standing on the fender of the trailer looking at the divider latch inside and trying to reach my arm down inside to release it, I realize I’m an idiot, and there’s a handle on the outside of the trailer to release the latch. Pull the latch, free the bulls, and they frolicked on their merry way to fresh grass. Done! Two and a half dang darn hours, but I did it! Solo, and without any escapes.
The moral to this story, if there is one, is probably slow and steady wins the race. Oh, and check your parking job multiple times before you release the critters. Also, the price of meat is high for a reason. I only wish I’d taken video of the whole process; it would have been highly entertaining. Thank you for coming along on my adventures from the week, and if you want to help reward me for my crazy work, check out our online store–I’ll happily ship you some lamb snack sticks so you can live the adventure right alongside us, but without the panic and the cardio.